Peak passengers but late trains

Peak V/Line train services on the Gippsland line are running at or near capacity.

Statistics for the services for October released by V/Line show that afternoon peak services from Melbourne to Traralgon - those that depart Melbourne at 3.19, 4.16 and 4.58pm - were at full capacity.

That is, the number of passengers at least matched the 222 seats available on those services on a daily average.

The two most heavily used morning services are those leaving Traralgon at 5.57am (Warragul 6.35am, Drouin 6.40 am) and 6.37am (Warragul 7.11am, Drouin 7.17 am).

In October those services ran on average at 91 per cent and 96 per cent capacity respectively.

V/Line points out that carriage configuration and the number of seats available can change on a daily basis.

The monthly performance report also reveals that while Gippsland line services exceeded the 96 per cent target for reliability - the number of scheduled services that ran - punctuality was the worst of the state’s five regional lines.

All five failed to meet the 92 per cent benchmark of trains arriving at their destinations within six minutes of schedule.

For trains running to or from Gippsland the figure was 85.1 per cent.

Public Transport Victoria director of performance and contract management Jeroen Weimar said the on-time performance for Gippsland was an improvement on the previous month but pointed out that some delays, such as requests by police and emergency services, were out of V/Line’s control.

However, he said V/Line analyses the causes of delays that affect most customers and concentrates on finding solutions to issues that affect the same trains more than once.